A blog by Bas Bleu, champions of the odd little book

Monthly Archives: September 2013

Newcomers to the Bas Bleu family always ask us about the initials that accompany our book reviews. Our longtime readers know that’s how we identify each review’s writer (you can find a “key” on page 2 of our catalog), but you may wonder why we feel the need to do so. Continue reading →

Recently, we stumbled across several old book reviews of now-classic books. That’s not unusual, of course; thousands of books are reviewed every year in newspapers and magazines across the country. Some of them are bound to become reader favorites. And yet what sets these reviews apart are their authors, bestselling writers in their own right who turned a writerly—or, rather, readerly, as writers tend to be voracious readers—eye to their colleagues’ contributions to the literary realm. Here are a few of our favorite excerpts, Continue reading →

If you’ve ever traveled across the Pond to the United Kingdom, you probably found yourself wondering, “Wait a second: I thought they spoke English here?” They do—but there’s a catch. Just as American English is rife with slang and colloquialisms that can baffle an outsider, so too is British English. So this week in the Bluestocking Salon we’re offering all you Anglophiles, travelers, and word-lovers a crash course in the more colorful side of “the Queen’s English.” Continue reading →